The school recently hosted a Spell Bee competition on Saturday 19th December 2009. The Spell Bee is the official Indian version of the famous American Spelling Bee contest.
It was conducted by the Times of India Group andhad about 135 schools participating in the event.There were 1200 students participating in the event. The Times Group folks had selected about 10 candidates from these schools. The participating schools were from all over – Pune, Kolhapur, Solapur, Nasik, etc.
There was a written round of 100 questions, which was quite easy for our children, given that they are so used to getting those questions on myEshala!
From 1200 students, 10 were chosen for the final audio visual round. What was so special about this? There were TWO children from our school in the final 10! Wow – think about that a little. 1200 children participated. 10 were chosen. 2 of them were from Millennium National School. That means for the second round, less than 1 percent were chosen from the first round. Out of those ten, two were from our school! Wow. That, in itself, is a feat! Even if we had no winners, the school would be proud of these two children – Neel Kelkar and Chinmay Markale!
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Neel Kelkar |
Chinmay Markale |
The children were put through 4 rounds of intense spelling tests, and out emerged the winner – Neel Kelkar from Millennium National School! Any guesses on who was the runner up? Chinmay Markale! Again, WOW!
So, now, it is easily possible for us to proudly say because of Neel and Chinmay, that our school is an authority in English speaking and reading in and around Pune!
The participating schools were from different boards – SSC, CBSE, ICSE and IB. There were convents and non-convents. After this win, it would be safe to say that not only is our school the best, but also that convents don’t matter in English reading and writing capabilities of children (which is a popular misconception). One more important point is of the syllabus. If all the other syllabi other than SSC were “advanced”, why weren’t there performances like ours? So, as we go around clearing misconceptions, here we go again – there is hardly any difference between the syllabi! Believe it, or not.
Well, that was a long post! And I hope you share our joy and wish Neel the very best for the National Spell Bee Final that is going to be held in Mumbai on Jan 9, 2010!
Here is the article from Times of India, dates 20th December 2009: http://timesofindia.indiatimes.com/city/pune/Neel-Kelkar-wins-city-round-of-Spell-Bee-contest-/articleshow/5357228.cms
